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How many words in Russian?

It’s not an easy question, because it’s hard to tell what actually counts as a word.
For example a word shape. Is it one word or two, or even three? It can be a verb (meaning to form), can be a noun (meaning figure). In the expression shape of mind (state) it is translated into Russian with a different noun.

The biggest Russian Modern dictionary contains around 200,000 entries. This dictionary does not have jargon, swear or archaic words. It also does not contain a lot of special terms – for that purpose there are many other specific dictionaries: medical, agricultural, juristic, etc.

According to Oxford Press the Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words.

But what is more important that on average a well-educated person knows and uses only around 6000 – 8000 words.